PM Modi to address 1st rally in Bengal today after draft voter list release

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit West Bengal's Nadia district on Saturday, where he will inaugurate national highway projects and address a public rally, amid heightened political tensions over the ongoing SIR exercise in the state.

This would be Modi's first visit to the state since the draft SIR rolls were published, and the third in the past five months.

The Prime Minister, political observers said, is scheduled to address the growing unease amongst the Matua community members post the publication of the draft rolls from his strategically located BJP rally venue in Taherpur area of Ranaghat, not far from the heartland of the Namasudra Hindu community in adjacent Bongaon.

In the process, Modi is likely to sound the BJP's bugle for the assembly polls, which are due in the state early next year and finalise the roadmap for the party's big push for the crucial elections.

The people of West Bengal are benefiting from numerous pro-people initiatives of the central government. At the same time, they are suffering due to the TMC's misgovernance in every sector, the PM posted on X on Friday evening while announcing his visit.

The loot and intimidation of the TMC have crossed all limits. That is why, BJP is the people's hope, he added.

The PM's visit comes at a time when the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has mounted sustained opposition to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, alleging that the exercise is being carried out in haste and that a large number of genuine voters, particularly refugee Hindus, risk disenfranchisement on its account.

In the draft electoral rolls published after the enumeration phase, 58,20,899 names have been excluded, reducing the electorate to 7.08 crore.

Around 1.36 crore entries have also been flagged for "logical discrepancies", while 30 lakh voters have been categorised as unmapped a significant percentage of whom are likely to be called for verification hearings over the next 45 days.

For Matuas, a Dalit Hindu community that migrated from Bangladesh over decades due to religious persecution, this exercise has revived anxieties over identity and documentation.

Political observers widely believe that the community members hold sway in as many as 80 of the 294 assembly seats in the state.

Speculations are rife that significant numbers of Matuas have already been excluded from draft rolls. Many more are likely to follow suit in the final rolls on account of the unavailability of the EC-specified indicative documents they need to produce in the eventuality of receiving hearing notices during the verification phase.

Over the past years, poll results have indicated that the BJP gained significant inroads within the community, promising them formal Indian citizenship.

BJP MP Jagannath Sarkar, who represents the Ranaghat Lok Sabha seat, where Taherpur is located, claimed that fear was being spread deliberately among the Matuas about SIR.

"We are hopeful that the PM's message would dispel those fears and canards," he said.

Chief Minister Banerjee has already led anti-SIR rallies in Nadia and North 24 Parganas, the two adjoining districts that share a border with Bangladesh and have a significant Matua presence.

During his visit, the PM will inaugurate and lay the foundation stone for two national highway projects worth around Rs 3,200 crore.

He will inaugurate the 66.7-km-long four-laning of the Barajaguli-Krishnanagar section of NH-34 in Nadia district and lay the foundation stone for the four-laning of the 17.6-km-long BarasatBarajaguli section in North 24 Parganas district.

The projects are expected to serve as a vital connecting link between Kolkata and Siliguri, boosting trade, tourism and economic activity across southern and northern parts of the state, officials said.